About “A Lovely Night”

Sung by Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone), this is the first of La La Land’s couples dance numbers. The scene illustrates the combative chemistry first felt by the movie’s two romantic leads, familiar from many classic movies such as Singin' In The Rain and Bringing Up Baby.

Walking to their cars after a party which has lasted all afternoon, Mia and Sebastian lament that a beautiful sunset, perfect for a romantic stroll, is being wasted on two people who are basically being forced to be in each other’s company. Still, neither leaves, and they spend the scene teasing each other and dancing together, unable to deny their obvious chemistry.

According to the lyricists, the first attempt was for a “meet cute” song. Then they decided it was better to have the characters as “antagonists who are razzing each other—sort of an ‘Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better’ tone. ”, before culminating in an “If I Loved You” moment.

What have the artists said about the song?

It’s kind of a mislead. It’s like “Isn’t this a lovely night?” Instead it’s “Isn’t this a lovely night? Too bad we don’t like each other.” It’s almost a play on [Top Hat’s “Isn’t This a Lovely Day (To Be Caught in the Rain)”] I just butchered that title, but I know that song we definitely talked about as a reference point.

“A Lovely Night” is, of all the songs in the movie, the only one that I really see as a true throwback song. Because we wanted it to be, in a lot of ways, kind of a nod to a Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers type of song. Like I just said, it has that sort of subversive element, that whole “but we don’t like each other” part of it, but musically and lyrically it is the most retro of all the songs in the movie, I think. With all the other songs I was really not listening to anything as I was composing and orchestrating. I was kind of trying to create textures and colors that would hopefully sound like their own thing and not like any of those old fashion movies. Whereas with “A Lovely Night,” I was deliberately trying to sound like a classic number from one of those older movies.